Accelerated Follicular Restoration to Speed Up Growth After a Hair Transplant?
Any thoughts on this Help Hair product that claims to accelerate the growth process after a transplant, so that it only takes 6 months to see the full results after surgery? It claims to reduce or eliminate the telogen phase after a hair transplant!
Press release from 2011 – link
Product page (with link to a study of 115 hair transplant patients) – link
I have been following the Help Hair product for some time, but I have been reluctant to hop on board because of the lack of clinical evidence that it works. On a positive note, it is logical, and the theory that “increased anabolic metabolism can affect regeneration of the hair follicle” makes sense (after all, we are what we eat). The change in diet brought on by this product may have no effect on a person who is healthy and eats healthy foods, but there may be a fine line between those with a good diet and those who might benefit from a better diet.
If I saw a good scientific study, I might want to endorse this product’s use in our practice, but as this increases the costs for our patients, I really want to see better evidence.
In our practice and in the years I have been doing hair transplants, most of the grafts routinely have started to grow within 6 months, and once hair starts to grow, it grows at 1/2 inch per month. So for example, for the transplanted hairs that grow out by the 5th month, we will see 1/2 inch length at the 6th month. I would be interested to see reports of when the hair actually starts to grow, and then use the 1/2 inch rule to determine when the “full results” are actually achieved.
Whey protein concentrate was often considered the cheaper form of whey for sports shakes but a lot of people have come to realise it has health benefits that outweigh its slight deficiency compared to isolate in muscle recovery terms.
I can’t find the study right now but there was something to do with faster nail and hair growth in women using a whey concentrate based shake.
It’s well known that a deficiency in quality protein and sulphur based compounds can lead to impaired hair, nail and skin repair/growth – I think it’s yet to be proven that increasing protein intake accelerates these processes beyond a threshold but you can certainly be sure that a diet deficient in protein will cause some impairment. This is especially true of those who engage in a lot of resistance exercise who I believe this shake was originally intended for.